Sometimes I wad up paper and throw it at my students. Let me explain.

When I was a high school student, we did something called WAD words. Word-A–Day. And that was something. I remember trying to be clever and incorporating them into a speech at graduation. Some of them I internalized. I think we had a […]

I bet you have a story about helium balloons. There was a party, a birth, a funeral, or someone was sucking in the gas and making a funny voice.

Here are two of my favorite:

1. My son was 2 or 3 or almost 4. Somebody gave him a helium balloon at Burgerville. He had seen […]

I wrote a small book a few years ago: The Little Goldenrod Book of Limericks. And every few years we play around with limericks in class. I try to use them to teach other things, and show quickly and easily how you can edit and play around with words. The form gets stuck in my head. […]

I’ve been making the case for learning new words at school. You know, being an English teacher and all. Sometimes it feels like the students are geese that I am going to use for foie gras someday. Gotta fatten up those livers! Foie gras is a popular dish in Hungary… they force feed the geese…

[…]

Let’s call this a cabinet of curiosities. A place to store a narwhal tusk because you don’t want a museum to have it. But that’s not why you need the cabinet. Museums rarely come knocking, but that shouldn’t stop you from collecting.

A lot of it, A LOT OF IT, comes from reading. You try […]

The episode “20 Acts in 60 Minutes” includes 20 short stories instead of the customary 3. I actually think of Act 14 a lot. The segment is called: “Call in Colonel Mustard for Questioning”

The story is about an updated hot dog factory. They realize that the product is different. They can’t figure out why. […]

Not only do I like songs about being my own grandpa, I just realized that I might be turning into my grandma. Not in all ways, but in some.

She used the right word at the right time.

I was in college. We were playing Scrabble. I had the word WHORE on my rack. […]

Recently at dinner I told my daughter (who was still wearing her leotard and sparkly skirt), fresh off a breakdown because she wanted new tap shoes TODAY, that: “Ballerinas LOVE elk chili.”

You already know, or you don’t, the parental impulse to say almost anything to get your kids to eat their dinner. That would be […]

This is a partial continuation of Appreciation #79. 

I found my copy of An Exaltation of Larks, and I’ve been listening to the news. I just heard a conversation between Stephen Colbert and Trever Noah where they were discussing Hillary Clinton’s use of the term “BASKET OF DEPLORABLES” to refer to Donald Trump supporters. […]